UNH's Goumas keeps season, career alive with big night

Kevin Goumas scored two goals to lead UNH back to the Hockey East
title game for the first time since 2005 with a 3-1 win over
Providence Friday night. (Dave Arnold/New England Hockey
Journal)

BOSTON – Kevin Goumas can see the finish line. He’d
do anything he can not to cross it just yet.

In the second Hockey East semifinal Friday night, Goumas was the
star, scoring two goals to lead New Hampshire to a 3-1 victory over
Providence that put the Wildcats back in the conference
championship game for the first time in seven years, with a chance
to win their first title since 2003.

For the senior from Long Beach, N.Y., who has been a fixture in
the UNH lineup for four years, the performance was a chance to
ensure his college career would last at least one more night.

“It’s been on my mind the last week or so,” he
said after the game. “The way I’ve been playing and
taking it is just going out and making sure it’s not my last
game. We want to take care of business here in Hockey East first,
and get one more chance to go to the NCAA Tournament, so, just
trying to leave it all out there on the ice.”

Goumas led the Wildcats in scoring last year, and was among the
team leaders in his sophomore year, but his swan song season has
been the finest of his UNH career. His 33 assists and 52 points
both lead the Wildcats, and have him third among Hockey East point
scorers this year. He’s been a steady performer throughout
the season, scoring points in 27 of his 39 games played so far.

But it’s really the last two months when Goumas has poured
it on. Over the last 13 games, including Friday night’s
semifinal, Goumas has collected 9 goals and 15 assists, and was
held off the scoresheet just once in that whole stretch. He scored
a hat trick in last weekend’s clinching Game 3 against
Northeastern, and added an assist as UNH punched its ticket to
return to the Garden.

Causeway Street is one place where Goumas has some unfinished
business. The Wildcats missed out on trips to TD Garden in each of
the last two seasons, after losing to Merrimack in the 2011
semifinals. That includes quarterfinal losses to BU in 2012 and
Providence in 2013. So Saturday night’s game is Goumas’
one and only shot at winning the Hockey East title as a player, and
on Friday, he did anything he could to make sure he got that
chance.

His first goal came shorthanded with a little less than 13
minutes to go in the second period, on a slick wraparound to put
the Wildcats on the board first.

“If you’re going to beat (Providence goaltender Jon)
Gillies (South Portland, Maine), you’re not going to beat him
with one clean play,” said UNH coach Dick Umile (Melrose,
Mass.). “There’s no doubt about it, we were trying to
get him to move. Kevin went for a great move with the wraparound
that, knowing him, that was his plan. I know he got forced wide,
but he knew what he was doing.

Where that goal showed his clever offensive skill, the second
goal was an example of his unwillingness to give up on plays. He
tried to feed a cross to linemate Nick Sorkin with the final
seconds ticking off the clock in the second period. The pass was
blocked, but Goumas quickly grabbed the loose puck and stuffed
another wraparound under Providence goaltender Jon Gillies, giving
UNH a 3-0 lead with four tenths of a second to go in the middle
period.

“I knew (the time) was getting down pretty close,”
Goumas said. “I didn’t know it was that
close.”

Sorkin and winger Matt Willows have been big beneficiaries of
Goumas’ career year. Sorkin is the only Wildcat with more
goals (20) than Goumas’ 19, while Willows has scored 18. Both
of Goumas’ linemates have 21 assists.

“Kevin’s obviously an amazing player,” Willows
said. “He gives 110 percent every time, and we wouldn’t
expect anything less from him.”

Nor should they. With a little more than 13 minutes to go in the
game, after Providence’s Kevin Rooney (Canton, Mass.) had cut
the UNH lead to 3-1, Goumas was at the end of a long shift, and saw
that the puck was heading out of the offensive zone on the far side
after one of UNH’s many offensive flurries. He started to
head over to the bench for a change. But then defenseman Matias
Cleland managed to hold the puck in at the blue line, and Goumas
lost almost no speed in turning 180 degrees to go back to the net,
where he nearly redirected another puck past Gillies for what would
have been his second hat trick in as many games.

Goumas’ emergence over the last two years has sparked a
lot of good things for UNH, but he’s hardly been a hidden gem
to Umile. Even in Goumas’ freshman season, when he was ninth
on the team with 18 points, Umile often mentioned him in postgame
interviews whether he’d scored or not.

Umile saw then what the rest of the Hockey East universe is
seeing now.

“He’s one of the smartest hockey players that
I’ve ever coached,” said Umile, whose alumni roster
includes such luminaries as Jason Krog, Steve Leach, and James van
Riemsdyk. “He’s always around the puck, he’s a
step ahead in anything that he does. It’s not by accident
that he forechecks and steals pucks – he knows the next step.
He’s just a tremendous, clever hockey player that can make
other players very good players, and he’s done that for Nick
Sorkin and Matty Willows this year.”

The Wildcats need at least one more big performance from Goumas
Saturday night, and if all goes well, they’ll return to the
NCAA Tournament. That means one more game, and one more chance to
push that finish line a little further down the road.